Thrall's Wine

by Hausladen, Blake;

  Master of many, indeed. I knew his kind. He made nothing but profit for himself. I considered tossing him into the bay but was just as interested to hear some explanation of my husband’s decision to become a shipbuilder. His move seemed rash. I worried he’d done it to earn the trinket pinned to his chest.

  The group waited for him to reply. They had been hounding him. I’d seen him beset by customers before, noble and even royals, but not like this. He looked around as if for his racks full of wheels, axels, and frames where he could readily demonstrate the weaknesses of amateurish meddling. He looked once toward the heavy craftsman’s bag slung over the shoulder of one of his carpenters, but the spark of the artisan upon my husband’s face began to fade. He was too prideful a man. He’d also been too much of an ass these last seasons for me to show him much pity.

  “Master O’Nropeel,” I said to him, rather like I would to a man at the oars who was pretending to pull. “We’d be fools to sail or build ships you cannot explain. Wagons and carriages are children’s toys compared to ships meant to sail the Pinnion Ocean. What can you do to demonstrate that you can be trusted to build them?”

  His eyes flared, yet the caldron of anger did not burst. Inward it went. He stomped across to the workman’s bag and began to search through it. “You are right, dear. Quite right. Here, let me show you.”

  He pulled out a keen knife and kicked around inside the bag until he found a fat stave of wood he liked. He sat himself down right there in the sand and began to carve feverishly upon the block. He hacked away at it like mad and began to organize the resulting pieces around himself. The last piece took the longest, and I recognized it at once as a solid keel. He notched the keel, and as easy as if he were drumming his fingers on a table, he fit the many pieces of hull planking to it. The craft was similar to the Thorne and its larger sister, but as we watched, the scale of his design became apparent. It had two decks and would be more than twice the size of our largest ship. He dived back into the bag, retrieving first a length of lead that he laid in as ballast and then a jar of pig fat that he slathered on the inside to seal the gaps in the planking. A pair of long masts and yards was next—carved just as fast—and bless him, he’d left spaces through both decks to slide the masts down and into the keel.

  “Your kerchief, Captain?” he asked me. I gave it and then winced involuntarily when he cut it in half diagonally. Pix knelt down beside him, and I nearly joined their fun. They rigged the elegant triangles of lanteen sails to yards and rails with a dozen ties of loose threading from the cut kerchief, whispering to each other as they worked. And then, like a god, Sevat stood and presented the ship to us.

  “She’ll cross any water and carry any cargo. I’d stake my life on it.”

  Those that did not know him looked on with disbelief. His carpenters and our admiral wore the exact opposite expression. If ever there was a man capable of the feat, it would be a carriagemaker and barge builder.

  “Let’s launch it,” Pix said happily, seized her father’s hand, and forced the rest of us to trot after them.

  “A silver quarter says it doesn’t float,” Master Herren said.

  “Bet,” called a score, including Pix. The man’s face wrinkled.

  “A silver quarter?” Admiral Mercanfur scoffed. “You have no conviction, sir. A full weight of gold says she makes it across the bay.”

  No one took this bet, though several considered it.

  Sevat waded hip-deep into the wind-blown waters of the bay, and after presenting the ship’s sail to the breeze, he let it go. The tiny ship was off like a dart. Its deep keel loved the push of the great sails, and she kept her line into the wind. We watched it go, and a great crowd gathered to cheer on the small craft. Lukan’s wife and daughters were amongst them, and Pix was nearly hysterical as she explained the happening to those that arrived.

  The waves of the bay were monstrous to the small craft, yet she had her way, riding and diving, never losing her line. The distance became so great that we lost sight of her behind the rise of each wave. Groans and gasps followed each disappearance, followed by great cheering.

  Then suddenly, she beached, and the crowd roared and clapped.

  She made it!

  A line formed in front of Master Herren, whose notion for inserting himself into Sevat’s business was well buried beneath calls for him to pay up. Pix was the first in line.

  Mercanfur called for a boat so that we could retrieve the brave little ship. He named Pix its captain and recruited Lukan as a fellow oarsman. Pix took her place at the prow with the Vlek girls and their mother, while Sevat and I enjoyed the bench seat in the stern. Pix called the strokes for our oarsmen for a time but did not outstay her welcome doing so. It was such a beautiful day, and the view and the breeze quieted us until we reached the far shore. Sevat retrieved his ship, and we started back. His smile faded.

  “What troubles you?” I asked.

  “It’s … do you remember how everyone reacted when we built those first heavy barges of yours—how angry they were when you started drawing away all the south branch trade? This ship is going to do the same.” His expression darkened further. “This one ship will carry 600 wagonloads at once. When Zoviya learns of it, it will be more of a threat to the Kaaryon than Barok or Geart.”

  I opened my mouth to disagree but could not. I asked, “Who would hate it the most?”

  Lukan said, “Every landed man whose livelihood moves upon the tithe roads.”

  “So, all of them,” I said, and considered the likelihood that Prince Barok would be prudent in his expansion of our interests. “We best build them quick then. The Kaaryon’s preoccupation with the East will not last forever.”

  Mercanfur laughed at that, hearing perhaps the note of longing in my voice. “You’re dying to sail this new ship, aren’t you?”

  I shook my head as if it was not true, but everyone aboard scrutinized me. I relented and said, “The sea calls to me. The entire Pinnion Ocean is yelling at me to join her.”

  No debate was offered.

  Mercanfur asked Sevat, “Forgive the question, but what is your agreement with the prince, exactly? I didn’t want to ask in front of that toad, Yerami.”

  “Oh, he’s a good enough sort. And with all his goings-on in Tayani, he is in a position to block all my efforts. Allow him his arrogance, if you can,” Sevat said. “But in confidence, the agreement is for a shipyard and one ship. I’ve sold everything I have to pay for a portion of the enterprise. The rest I funded with a loan from the prince. The first ship is mine outright. If the design succeeds, he has contracted to buy twenty more. I’ve committed to finish the first ship in sixty days.”

  “Sixty? How many men are you employing?” Lukan asked.

  “Every man I could find. I’ve hired on all those who worked the construction of the five ships here, and another thousand from various parts—most of those from the families of the auxiliaries. I’ve convinced them to take land in Tayani and become ship builders instead of dirt farmers.”

  None of us would have believed a word of it if not for the model he held.

  We fell silent then as we saw the crowd that awaited us upon the beach.

  Our oarsmen slowed. It would be a long time before the group of us would be able to enjoy such a quiet moment together, and if time was a thing you could stop or stall, that moment was one to be preserved.

  When we did put in, the admiral and the arilas surrendered to their duties. The demands for my husband’s attention were as numerous and as urgent. He basked in the admiration but could not stop picking nervously at one of the calluses upon his beautiful hands—the very oldest of his many habits.

  I cleared my throat lightly by way of signal, and he clasped his hands together. The sheepish half-embarrassed look he sent me turned into a smile that grabbed his whole face and lit his eyes like stars.

  That’s my man, right there.

  “A word, please, my husband,” I said and took hold of his hand. He apologized to th
e many that wanted his time and followed me into the inn. I shut the doors against the crowd, took hold of him, and slid my hands down his back. He smelled wonderful.

  “We should get to things,” he said, but the words trailed off as I kissed him.

  I tugged him toward the stairs, and the idea for it got ahold of him at last. He clasped my hand, and we raced up to my room. He paused once more at the door. “Aren’t we a bit old for this?”

  “Get inside,” I ordered, and he obeyed me with a smile.

  40

  Geart Goib

  “Come on, Geart, let’s try again,” Lilly said. Her enthusiasm was boundless. My patience for failure and interruption was not.

  The comfortable split-level house off of Merit Square was not a good spot for teaching anything, much less the skills of a druid. It was owned by Lilly’s parents, who were overjoyed to donate the unoccupied workmen’s space on the first level for us to use. It was a raucous place. Noisy people filled the busy square, a mason’s hammer clashed with iron in the next building up the street, and the calls of the auctioneer the next one down filled our ears. Just then, half the crowd was yakking about some ship Master Sevat had started up in Tayani. Avin’s lectures on the layers of skin and muscle were as distracting. Lilly might as well have been listening to the clamor of a consortium meeting as close to hearing new nouns as she came. She’d learned all the nouns I knew, one after the other without much effort. But that was not what I needed to teach her. She needed to be able to learn new words, as I had once been able to. I did not know how to teach her this.

  Avin was much happier than I was. He had a dozen greencoats and an equal number of young women learning very properly how to be healers. He was using the same text he’d taught me with and promised to allow them access to all the many books we’d taken from the library in Bessradi when they’d mastered Wounds of the Flesh, the Head, and the Viscera. Bayen was not a component of his lecture. He began each with a quiet chanting of the healing song’s verb before Lilly arrived, and ended each with a chanting of the song’s two nouns. It was a fantastic enterprise—an art born up from generations of men grasping for the power I’d been dunked in. So slight was their hold upon the skill, so narrow. But all a proper healer needed was those few words and an understanding of how they could be used.

  Lilly tugged at my sleeve, but I was saved when Avin stood. “No more today,” he said, though it was clear he and his students wished otherwise. “I have court today. Eargram will be here to roust me soon if I don’t get moving.”

  He wasn’t kidding, either. The jailor rapped on the door. He had horses outside.

  I’d forgotten all about it. I’d had other plans and looked around for the bundle of cut flowers I’d bought that morning. Lilly had hold of them.

  “They wilted,” she said.

  “Rot. Of course they did.”

  “I’ll get you some more. I know just the place. They’re for Pemini, right?”

  “Yes, dear girl. How did you know?”

  “Father brings a lot of them for mother. It makes her smile.”

  Avin said, “Geart, are you coming?”

  I nodded and said to her, “Thank you, Lilly. Tell her … tell her … just tell her I miss her, and that I’ll see her when Avin is done at the courthouse.”

  She dashed off with her bright smile, and the pair of Chaukai assigned to my student trotted after her.

  Eargram led Avin and I to the far west side of town. The place had been a wide forest of birch and pine when I’d arrived at Urnedi, and the sight of the long rows of warehouses was jarring. Every one of them was busy with all kinds of men and materials.

  “It is too much to take in all at once,” I said to Avin while we waited on a cart full of hammers to roll by.

  “Barok has managed quite an enterprise,” he said. “His pledge of service is a thing of genius.”

  “You think so?” I asked, happy for Barok to be so well liked.

  “It is. By the terms of the pledge, everything made by the men you see here belongs to the prince until their two years is up.”

  “Everything they make belongs to Barok?”

  “The master craftsmen and the Chaukai are treated separately, but yes. Everything here belongs to the prince.”

  “Why are they doing it? Aren’t they just making him rich for nothing?”

  “Not at all. A great deal of the goods he is producing go right back to all those who work for him. Every man who has signed stands a remarkable chance of ending his two years of service with tools, a trade, and a well-built house upon land that he owns. Barok will get to sell all the finished goods if he ever finds a port to deliver it to—which I believe he will. But the effort here is apart from that. This is where all the men who work for Barok come to get the materials and tools they need.”

  “Doesn’t anybody ever steal anything? Who is keeping track?”

  “That is what the reeve’s men at the customhouse take care of.”

  “And you and the bailiffs?”

  “Laws and punishments are a poor way to keep men honest compared to a reeve’s inventory.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “The reeve’s men keep track of what everyone produces, and their tallies are public. Everyone knows what their neighbor is making, and what they have. The men who do well here are the ones who produce. Lazy men and men who are hoarding are very poor by comparison and risk being sent back over the mountain with nothing.”

  “And the thieves?”

  “Eargram has been keeping them for me here in the jail. Today we sort them out.”

  I hurried us along after that, excited at the prospect of seeing Avin in action.

  We reached the last warehouse on the southernmost row. It was a lonely place that faced the corner of the palisade. It had no windows and a troop of greencoats was posted at each corner. Eargram led us inside.

  It was dark and dingy for a courthouse, but as jails went, it was spacious and warm. Thirty-some oil lamps hung from the heavy timber rafters, and light poured through the openings under the eaves that let out the rising smoke. The space was divided in half by a screen of tall cedar posts. On the near side, several rows of benches lined the walls facing an official-looking riser at its center. Every spot was taken, and a crowd packed the space behind them. A thin table and a single high-backed chair occupied the center of the riser. On the far side, makeshift cells of more cedar posts lined all three walls of the wide rectangle. They faced a cooking fire and two stone tables. The prisoners lounged upon their cots or leaned upon the bars of their cells. I did not like the sight of it. I had spent too long at Apped Prison with only a bit of blue sky to tell me the rest of the world was still there.

  “What are they charged with?” I asked Eargram.

  “They haven’t been, and that’s the problem. No lawyers, no charges. No judge, no sentences. Many of these men have been here since the Tracians surrendered to the prince—the last of the slavers.”

  I was not sure who he meant until I recognized a few of them. They were the men who had delivered Harod’s slaves to Arilas Kuren’s army. They’d nearly killed Avin on that long trip. Hundreds more were not as fortunate. I found myself hoping they would cause trouble.

  Eargram pointed at the last two cells on the left side. “Those are the only men who have been charged. Guardsman Oklas and Swordmaster Fenol.”

  “Look,” one of the prisoners said. “Here’s that vest they promised us. Wasn’t he one of Harod’s churls?”

  Several men from the audience rose and approached us.

  “Stand clear,” Avin said. His expression was ice-hard and as focused as a line sergeant ten paces from an enemy. “I will hear the cases in turn, not as you wish them. Sit.”

  They retreated, and Eargram handed over a thick stack of sheets to Avin. “The docket, Your Grace.”

  Avin took the offered stack. “Very good. Stay close, sir, I’ll be moving quickly. Geart, please find a place with the rest.”


  I went and stood out of the way against one wall. It was nice to not be the center of attention. Avin sat down upon the solitary chair and organized the sheets into two stacks upon the table. One grew very tall. He handed it to Eargram.

  “Call the first,” he said.

  “Thile Seaton,” Eargram said with the boom only jailors can manage, “accused by Master Circ Awen of robbing his store of sixteen pennies and two pieces of silver.”

  The two men were escorted to the center of the room facing Avin. A pair of greencoats stood behind each. Circ motioned triumphantly toward those he knew in the crowd. They cheered him on.

  “Sir,” Avin said curtly, “this is my room, not yours. You will behave, or you will be found in contempt of Bayen’s court and spend a year confined.”

  I swallowed as hard as poor Circ. Avin was a judge of Bayen’s laws.

  The men in the crowd all looked around at each other. None of them seemed to have known what to expect, either. Everyone sat up a bit straighter. The one man wearing a hat took it off.

  Avin leaned forward and crossed his forearms. He said to Circ, “Present your witnesses to the crime.”

  “Witnesses? He did it. What need is there for witnesses, Avin?”

  “Master Awen, I wish very much for you to not make yourself the first person I convict. You will answer as asked, and not one word more. You may address me as Chief Prelate or Your Grace and not otherwise. Now, once again, I ask that you name your witnesses.”

  Every prisoner on the far side had gotten to his feet. They stayed as quiet as mice, but they were watching.

  “Do you have a witness, Master Awen?”

  “No, Chief Prelate.”

  “Did the accused have some special access to your coins?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “How did you come to suspect him?”

  “He was standing outside my shop when I discovered the coins missing.”

  “Were there others inside your shop or in the street at that time?”

  “Quite a few, I imagine.”